\n And of course you\u2019d be right.\n<\/p>\n
\n But when you look at the musicians who have grown up here and gone on to influence pop, rock, punk, and other genres of music, you realise there is much more to it than that.\n<\/p>\n
\n So this series is mainly about them, but not forgetting the festivals, of course!\n<\/p>\n
\n In 1955, rock and roll took the UK by storm. The film Blackboard Jungle crossed the Atlantic, Elvis burst on the scene, and rock \u2019n\u2019 roll became the identity for an entire post-war generation.\n<\/p>\n
\n Skiffle also became a craze with the release of Lonnie Donegan\u2019s version of Rock Island Line.\n<\/p>\n
\n Lonnie Donegan (Image: John Hannam Archives)\n<\/p>\n
\n The Island encountered skiffle first-hand when Donegan played Ryde\u2019s Commodore Theatre in February 1957, and then rock \u2019n\u2019 roll when Tommy Steele, the \u2018English Elvis\u2019, played the same venue weeks later.\n<\/p>\n
\n The County Press reported that over 2,600 people attended Donegan\u2019s two performances.\n<\/p>\n
\n The Commodore and other Island cinemas also showed the iconic films, Rock Around the Clock, featuring Bill Haley and his Comets, and Rebel Without a Cause.\n<\/p>\n
\n But if rock \u2019n\u2019 roll gripped the nation, there was still space for the clean-cut, boy-next-door singer of the Pat Boone variety.\n<\/p>\n
\n And one of the leading British versions of Boone was a man from the Island, the farmhand and milkman, Terence Perkins, later Craig Douglas.\n<\/p>\n
\n Perkins was born in 1941 in Prospect Road, Newport.\n<\/p>\n
\n Pop star Craig Douglas in 1959. (Image: John Hannam Archive)\n<\/p>\n
\n His family, several of whom were musical, later moved to the Pan Estate, and Terence was educated at Priory Boys School (later Priory Boys Secondary Modern).\n<\/p>\n
\n One day he came home from his job at Bill Strickland\u2019s Farm in Calbourne to find his mother had entered him in a talent contest at the Medina Cinema in Newport.\n<\/p>\n
\n This was November 1957, and he was just 16.\n<\/p>\n
\n Singing Mary\u2019s Boy Child, he won the contest over some rockers who, as he put it, “had bootlace ties, luminous socks, Tony Curtis haircuts and did Presley stuff.”\n<\/p>\n
\n He sang Pat Boone\u2019s Love Letters in the Sand to win the first heat.\n<\/p>\n
\n Soon after, he was spotted by the manager and record producer, Bunny Lewis, and his wife, Janique Joelle.\n<\/p>\n
\n They encouraged him to turn professional, and gave him the stage name, Craig Douglas.\n<\/p>\n
\n After a week at the Empire Theatre, Portsmouth (where he was billed as \u2018The Boy with the Golden Voice\u2019), Lewis got him on BBC TV\u2019s Six-Five Special alongside Cliff Richard and Joe Brown.\n<\/p>\n
\n His career really took off when he signed with the record label, Top Rank.\n<\/p>\n
\n His second single, Teenager in Love, reached number 13 and, encouraged by this, Lewis got him to record Only Sixteen at EMI’s Abbey Road Studios.\n<\/p>\n
\n Sam Cooke\u2019s original version had made little impression in the US, but the milkman from the Isle of Wight took it to Number One, keeping Cliff\u2019s Living Doll off the top slot for a week or two!\n<\/p>\n
\n He became a hugely popular all-round entertainer, moving from earning \u00a34.10s a week on his milk round to an apartment in Dolphin Square, London.\n<\/p>\n
\n Appearances on TV, and in the musical comedy film It’s Trad, Dad!, helped make him a household name.\n<\/p>\n
\n Once he was marooned in a theatre in Wales as crowds of fans waited outside, and had to be smuggled out of town in a hearse!\n<\/p>\n
\n Craig Douglas at his 80th birthday party at the Royal Esplanade Hotel in Ryde.\n<\/p>\n
\n At Ryde Commodore in the summer of 1959, he had to take four curtain calls before he could leave the stage.\n<\/p>\n
\n In all, he had nine Top 40 singles, including four consecutive Number 9 placings on the UK Singles Chart.\n<\/p>\n
\n Another claim to fame is that he was backed by the Beatles at their first major stage show, in October 1962.\n<\/p>\n
\n Brian Epstein organised the show at the Liverpool Empire to give his prot\u00e9g\u00e9s their first professional booking.\n<\/p>\n
\n Douglas was on just after the \u2018Fab Four\u2019, who stayed on to back him for his set.\n<\/p>\n
\n Also on the bill was Jet Harris with the Jetblacks \u2013 watch this space!\n<\/p>\n
\n Incidentally, two of the best books about the Beatles were penned by people with Island connections: Hunter Davies, who wrote their only authorised biography, and who currently lives in the east Wight; and Philip Norman, author of Shout.\n<\/p>\n
\n Hunter Davies (Image: IWCP)\n<\/p>\n
\n Norman grew up in Ryde, where his father Clive ran the Pier Pavilion, otherwise known as the Seagull Ballroom, an important rock venue in the 1950s and \u201860s.\n<\/p>\n
\n Douglas\u2019 star waned as the Beatles ascended, but his career lasted 50 years, and he released a new album in 2011.\n<\/p>\n
\n Author Philip Norman, on stage at St Mary’s Church in Cowes. (Image: IWCP)\n<\/p>\n
\n Douglas, now in his 80s, also made an impression on the Rolling Stones.\n<\/p>\n
\n His review of their first single, Come On, in Melody Maker, was not complimentary, and when they were all on the same bill for the show Thank Your Lucky Stars shortly after, they got their own back by putting empty milk bottles outside his dressing room door with notes saying “Two pints please” tucked in.\n<\/p>\n
\n In my next article, we\u2019ll look at some of the bands who sprang up on the Island in the 1950s and 1960s.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And of course you\u2019d be right. But when you look at the musicians who have grown up here…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":650238,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[96,128,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-650237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-entertainment","tag-music","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=650237"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/650237\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/650238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=650237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=650237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=650237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}